Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2015

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

It's a continuous process. We are always evaluating where our needs are, where the threats are. For example, I intend to look at Europe in the coming months. Do we need as many liaison officers in Europe? Could they be better situated elsewhere in the world to address those threats?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you.

Mr. Albas, you have the floor now, sir.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Thank you to all of our witnesses for their testimony here today.

Picking up where Mr. Vaughan left off, I guess the liaison officer is specific not only to the threats, but also to what will fit in a specific situation. Is that not true, Chief Superintendent? The report says that to establish a new office, there are set-up costs, as well as the time you mentioned about building relationships and whatnot, so that's a cost and a benefit you have to constantly go through.

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

That's a huge thing for us to do, because if we leave a post and we no longer have a law enforcement presence there, we're giving up some of those relationships that we worked very hard to maintain.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Further to the question about there being more challenges and our living in more uncertain times, as the Auditor General pointed out, criminality and terrorist threats don't respect borders, so I can see how you're constantly doing that. But again, to my mind, the answer would not be simply to add more liaison officers, because they're a specific tool, and whether or not you can fit someone into some of the countries that Mr. Giguère pointed out in his advice to you, I'm sure you have to look to see if that's the correct tool in the correct part of the world. Also, I think that's why you've taken up the Auditor General's recommendation about evaluating Europol. That's one way you could link directly with your colleagues from all different...where you could actually minimize resources by being closer together. Is that not the case?

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

That's 100% correct.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I think in the action plan you were recommending having an evaluation in the spring of whether Europol would be a good use of taxpayer money.

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

That's correct.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

So Europol is a tool that is different from the liaison officer, and you have to look at it on a needs-assessment basis and do a cost-benefit analysis. Is that correct?

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

Yes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Good. That straightens it out in my mind.

Auditor General, I would like to take a little bit of time to talk about your third recommendation, specifically to justice officials. It says:

2.43 We found that Justice Canada had appropriate processes in place to ensure that supporting documents complied with the requirements of pertinent treaties and legislation.

To me it sounds as though they know their job and they are doing it. You did raise some concerns about delays, but most of those delays are outside of their direct control. Is that not correct, Mr. Auditor General?

[Michael Ferguson]

We did find that they had the appropriate processes. In fact, I think we also identified that the Department of Justice respects the timelines they are required to process things within, but when you look at the whole process from beginning to end on some of these, they seem to take a long time. We felt that Justice could take a look at the whole process, and even though some of those things might be outside their direct control, they might be able to influence part of it in order to shorten some of those timelines.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I'm glad you raised that point about influence, because again we've heard today that it's very important for us to be working with other countries and even with our own departments.

In your recommendation 2.48, you say, “The Department of Justice Canada, in consultation with domestic and foreign partners, should assess the reasons for significant delays in processing requests for extradition or mutual legal assistance and develop strategies to mitigate where possible”.

When I first read this, Auditor General, I kind of scratched my head, because it sounds a little wishy-washy at first, but I think what Chief Superintendent Slinn said in his testimony today about how important it is to be building those relationships points out that there is a real inherent value in that.

The only thing I questioned in my mind is from a management perspective. If I have an employee and tell that employee that I want them to track how long it takes for another department in another country to get them the materials they need to do their job, if they're spending time documenting that—and that's what I think has come up from this—they would not be able to do other work, such as, for example, picking up a phone, barking on the line, and asking for that information and following it up, so to speak.

Is that really what they are doing here, Auditor General? You have suggested they put in a process so that they can evaluate and then go to our major partners like France and the United States and say, “Here are the numbers, the hard data we have”, and put it in front. Is that what the thrust of this recommendation is trying to do?

[Michael Ferguson]

What the recommendation is about is for them to do an analysis of that whole time period. Through a lot of the explanations today, I think we have heard that there were situations between the RCMP and DFATD, for example, where perhaps some requests were incomplete or were not consistent. I think this is a similar type of thing.

The Department of Justice may be able to process the request within the required timeframe when they have all of the information, but perhaps what they're getting is some incomplete information or some inconsistency in the way the information is coming in, or something else like that, whereby it's perhaps just a matter of a conversation to say, “You know what? When you're asking for one of these things, if we had this type of information, or this information in this format, we would be able to get to it more quickly.” It could be something like that, just to identify if there's anywhere in there where they can make some suggestions to make the process more efficient.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you, sir. The time has expired.

Mr. Garrison, you have the floor again, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

In looking at recommendation 2.23, the Auditor General has made I think a very limited recommendation about assessing the performance of the liaison officer program to ensure that it gets the best use of its limited resources. I guess I have a bit more confidence in the program, such that in fact it might be able to demonstrate that it needs more resources.

Setting that aside, what you said in response, Chief Superintendent, is that it would be fully implemented by 2015-16. We're just about—in a couple of months—to enter the 2015 fiscal year. When you said that it would be fully implemented by the end of the fiscal year, what does that actually mean? Does that mean you're going to start at the beginning of the year and be done by the end? Where are we on that?

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

I think it will be done by the end of 2016. We'll be good.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Does that mean that you'll have measures in place by then or that you will have done the measuring by then?

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

We are in the midst right now of establishing what those measures are. Those will be rolled out within the coming months, I would say.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

By the time we get to the budget process for the next year, will you have those so they could be useful for the next budget cycle?

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

For budget 2016?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Yes.

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

I hope so.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

So do I.